


With the Quaffle

by Ember Nickel (primeideal)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Gen, Long timespan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-22
Updated: 2012-02-22
Packaged: 2017-10-31 14:32:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 50
Words: 19,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/345124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/primeideal/pseuds/Ember%20Nickel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angelina never breaks Lee's heart, because he refuses to take her that seriously. Lee, Angelina, George, Alicia, Katie, and Oliver remember together. Originally written spring 2011.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Charlie

**Author's Note:**

> This is a long story that will tie in with several one-shots I've already written (the "Lost for Words" series). A couple of lines, I've expanded from my older fics and reworked here. However, no background knowledge is required for this one-it can be read independently. With that, and a few relevant lyrics, here we go!
> 
> She never seemed to notice  
> That this silly schoolboy crush  
> Wasn't just pretend
> 
> Once you'd gone there was never  
> Never an honest word
> 
> We've still got time  
> Raise your hopeful voice  
> You have a choice

Charlie Weasley went off to study dragons.

_The_  Charlie Weasley, best Seeker of his day, best Quidditch player of his day overall really, went off to Romania, to study dragons.

Katie remembers that year, how Oliver Wood saw her whizzing around on a school broom between classes, how he stammered to Hooch, that since she was twelve, maybe that'd make her old enough, how Snape had laughed that her little school broom would grow wings and fly to the Forbidden Forest of its own accord before he'd let a first year play, how McGonagall had smiled and told Wood that he didn't need to worry about lacking confidence, how he discovered Alicia Spinnet at literally the eleventh hour before the game began, how they were flattened anyway. How she still decided she wanted to play Quidditch as soon as she could.

"Charlie Weasley," she feels compelled to point out. " _the_  Charlie Weasley, best Seeker of his day—"

"Best Quidditch player of his day overall, really," Lee Jordan contributes from a couch.

"Right, that, went off to  _Romania_ , to study  _dragons_."

There's a brief pause.

"I don't like dragons, really," says Alicia. "They breathe fire and all."

"I know, I know. But...Alicia, broomstick-crafting, really? Angelina, don't think I don't know what you're thinking about. If Charlie Weasley can find something besides Quidditch to do, surely you can."

"Oh, and what are you going into?" Angelina retorts. "Bell-ringing?"

" _Musica universalis_  is an interesting field of magical research," she retorts, "and besides, I've got another year before career advice meetings."


	2. Malfoy

Malfoy, he decides, is a git.

Git, git, git, git, git.

As an announcer, perhaps he should be using a wider range of vocabulary.

"Prat" would be an insult to prats. "Jerk" is closer.

Git.

Malfoy has ruined...

quite a lot.

He's an announcer. He's not really require to take sides. He's not part of the team, they're down in the common room doing whatever it is that they do. Most recently it's been celebrating. He's been there for some of that.

Malfoy is a...

he's got a nice singing voice.

Git.

Ron got through it all, put up with it and disappeared. But George, George would fight for his family's name. Lee didn't expect anything less of him. Harry would stick up for the Weasleys. Who wouldn't?

Malfoy. How  _dare_  he have. He's... _inveterate_ , that's what an announcer would say. Inveterate what, Lee isn't exactly sure. But inveterate all right.

Fred.

Fred, didn't hurt anybody, and now  _he's_  off the team too.

Though, something slightly more cool in Lee reminds him, Fred would've done. And worse, probably. If he hadn't had Alicia pulling on his left shoulder, Katie gripping his right forearm, and (because he could have fought off those two), Angelina clenching him at the waist.

If  _he'd_  had Angelina giving him that kind of an embrace he'd have listened to what she was trying to tell him.


	3. Kenneth

Kenneth Towler very nearly brought up the rear as they waited to take N.E.W.T.s. Forty-five first years, there'd been, once, waiting to walk into the Great Hall. Towler, it should have been, with Vaughan. Weasley, and Weasley.

No, that came out wrong. Forty-five...

No, that was right. Diggory was dead, and everyone else got shifted down.

And the twins are gone, they who should have been thinking up ways to really prank the examiners—"you'd like to see our practical knowledge? have a look at  _this_ , why don't you!"—they are gone, leaving Towler to fidget at the edge of the unordered mass, leaning against the wall, really about the end of the line.

He catches Angelina's eye. Her smile is genuine, her nod friendly.  _We'll be out of here soon._ Nothing more.

They had goals, of sorts. Things worth staying for. Maybe that was enough, something they had in common, something they could have together.

"...Angelina," says the examiner. With a confident swing of her braid, she walks in, he is left outside. If Diggory was still alive he'd have been in some other group and he and Angelina would be in the same one. Or maybe some other what if.


	4. Ginny

Ginny Weasley is snogging Dean Thomas.

He sees them, one morning, in the halls. It's quite clear what they're doing, and it takes a while for the image to leave his head. Not that it's overwhelmingly attractive, or that he's jealous of Dean. Or Ginny. It just...sticks in his mind for some reason, how bright her hair looks up against his face.

There is the matter of him being best friends with two of her older brothers. But they're gone, it's not like he can gossip with them about her for a couple more days.

They are beautiful together, maybe that's all it is. Not too stimulating, as it were, but maybe it's Dean the artist finding a way to make them look gorgeous from every angle. Lee wouldn't date Ginny—Merlin's beard, he's about to leave and she's a fourth-year!—but maybe it's a sign, he thinks, a sign he could look just as handsome next to someone who's nothing like him.

But he doesn't fancy Angelina because of the color of her skin. Not when there's that braid of hers. Or how she helps him go over the theories of Defense after a late night at the D.A. Or how, even when they're exasperated with her for scheduling practices too early, nobody can bring themselves to get mad at her.

Or the way she flies.

It's only a few days, he tells himself, and the year will be over and they'll be grown up.


	5. Ron

Ron must've been the one who told him, and he got it from Harry, or something. Fred doesn't pay much attention.

But maybe he should.

"What can I get for you?" he grins. "Now if you want some nice tall-necked robes so Malfoy's cursed necklaces can't touch your skin, that'd be Madam Malkins' down the street, only it'd be an awful pity if you couldn't wear anything too reveal—"

"Fred, what are you suggesting?" George cuts in. "To  _Katie_ , of all people! Not that you're, er, you wouldn't look nice in low-cut robes, it's just a bit hard to visualize with Fred, I mean, we've known each other for...er, what is it?" Trust George to notice when someone's not actually paying attention.

"Er, nothing. I was just, what'd you say about Malfoy?"

"Oh. Wouldn't want him giving you any more cursed necklaces, is all."

"Any  _more_? Was he behind the first one?"

Fred's face falls. "You didn't know."

"How could I have?"

"I'm so sorry, I thought you knew."

"For what?"

"I don't know, it's just..."

"What difference does it make? He's still a git, I'm still alive, he's still working for the Death Eaters or whatever. It doesn't matter."

"There's a point in that," Fred admits.

"So what  _did_  you actually want?" asks George.

"Oh. Er. Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder, if you still have some...?"

"Right this way."


	6. Kingsley

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I make the same mistake Angelina does in not understanding a certain part of book 7. The reason I found out what it meant was by reading through the great annotations at HPCompanion.Com, a highly recommended site!

Kingsley Shacklebolt sits down.

"Thanks, Royal," smiles Lee. "And now over to a new correspondent, Seraph."

Seraph. Angels. Fair enough. Angelina steps up to the microphone.

"Seraph, what can you tell us about the Quidditch strike?"

"Well—er—" what's his little codename? "As, er, I suppose most of you know, the Muggle-Born Registration Committee has knocked out about a quarter of the league. So, a few teams are getting desperate, calling up reserves—I myself was, er, fortunate to get extended an invitation."

"But you haven't actually played a game yet."

"No. There's been a number of pure-blood and half-blood professionals who are outraged at this treatment, which is why we're going on strike. We hope that by bringing the league to its knees we'll be showing the fans and the administration how absurd of a policy the Ministry's adopting."

"Hmm, yes, now that so many of your co-workers are unavailable, if you yourselves quit...Seraph, would you recommend this tactic to any of our listeners?"

"Absolutely not. Quidditch players are a rare breed as far as salary goes—we can afford to make these kinds of gestures at utterly outrageous things. But most people need to work to support their families. So please, keep going to your jobs and looking out for your coworkers, just be alert as always."

"Is there anything else you suggest our listeners do?"

"Yes, of course. You can boycott the league, that'll help tell the Ministry that you're not just going to play along like everything's okay. That'll help us cripple it even more."

"Thanks, Seraph. That'll be all for now, folks, thank you so much for listening. Our next password will be "Amelia." Keep each other safe. Keep faith. Good night."

"It's the afternoon, River," says Kingsley.

"Have a good afternoon, too. We need all the good days we can get."

Slumping back, he flicks the microphone off and lies back on the floor.

"River?" Angelina repeats. "I mean, Seraph and Royal make sense, but River?"

"River? Jordan?" he echoes.

"...Oh. Can't believe I missed that, of course. When I tread the verge of Jordan, and all that..."

"Treading his verge?" Kingsley asks. "Is that what they call it these days?"

The precise shade of pink Angelina turns is one of the first memories that floats to the surface of Lee's Pensieve, years later, always ready to be recalled. The precise shade of pink Lee turns goes unnoticed, as Angelina is staring at the floor.

"'Sfrom a song," she mutters. "That Welsh one. Catapults fans have their own version of the lyrics."


	7. Christopher

Christopher Jonson lives at the safehouse in Wigan.

He says it to himself again. Jonson without an H.

Montrose Magpies. Seeker.

He looks at the clock. She said she'd be there any...

With a  _crack_ , Angelina Apparates into the untidy den, raising her eyebrows to mask the reflective wince of her nose. "Nice place."

"Thanks."

"I thought with all the money you'd be making as a hotshot starter you could buy something a little less...rancid. Or hire someone to keep it clean."

Not one to beat around the bush, Angelina. "You and I both know I'd be glad to sit on the bench if it meant Bruce could show his face in public."

"Then do it!" she exclaims. "Put your Galleons where your mouth is!"

"If," he repeats, "it meant Bruce could show his face in public. Is your gang of strikers accomplishing that?"

She seems like she wants to say something that she doesn't. "Just look at the company you're keeping. This won't look good when the war is over."

"What do I care about looking good? I want to give the fans something now! When there's next to nothing else to enjoy at least they have this!"

"What fans, Oliver? Only the ones they let through the gates, if you're not who they like they'll stop you at the door. Or worse."

"It's better than nothing. Which is, coincidentally, exactly what you're pulling off."

"Fine. Fine. Be a selfish git, don't care about anything but your own career. Put that ahead of everything. But don't you  _dare_  claim that you're doing it for anybody's sake but your own."

"Sometimes the right thing to do isn't for the sake of anyone in particular."

"Yes. Like,  _right now_."

They meet each other's eyes, unrelenting, until Angelina says "I'm morbidly curious to see if your bathroom can possibly be in any worse shape than the rest of this place. Plus, I have to..."

"Apparate back and use your own?" he suggests. "I can be hospitable, look. First door on your left."

She returns in a few minutes, unimpressed. "You really need to clean that out every once in a while."

"It must be nice to have so much free time."

She appraises him for a long moment. "Look. You're not helping. No matter how you want to justify it, you're a collaborator."

"I'm bringing people happiness."

"Not the ones who matter," she says, and vanishes.

Christopher Jonson is hidden in the safehouse in Wigan. With Phoebe McLean, Chaser, Appleby. Tessa Iglehart, Beater, Wimbourne.

Bruce Cameron, Keeper, Puddlemere.

Oliver was the perfect choice, really. Everybody knows he only cares about Quidditch.


	8. Elizabeth

Elizabeth Thomas is not the last person Lee expects to be making his Galleon turn cold, if only because he has never heard of her.

The original use still works; every once in a while he'll feel it glow hot and know that the numbers on the side are changing to reflect a new date and time. But—and he's not sure if Granger did this, or Terry Boot, or maybe Lovegood, or if it was like that all along, but somehow people are managing to change the  _text_ , too, where it says "Galleon". It's a slow process, but apparently the students still at Hogwarts find it useful.

It's hard to believe, but there are only other seven members of the D. A. who are really old enough to be out of school. One of them's Marietta and she barely counts, and five others played for the Gryffindor Quidditch team. (Then there's Cho Chang.)

Curious who could be sending out messages now—it's daytime, the students should be in class...well, maybe they're on break. Lee picks up the Galleon and squints.

_Hello_ , it reads.

_Who is this?_ , he laboriously sends back; he must hold down one letter at a time and wait for all the characters to cycle through.

_Elizabeth_ , comes the reply. Hmm. There weren't any Elizabeths in the D. A., but it sounds like Neville's been recruiting...

_Which House_

Pause, hope she's got it, keep trying. There isn't much room on a Galleon

_are you in?_

_Ours_ , Elizabeth sends.

What?

_Which house?_ he repeats.

_Are you okay?  
Where are you?_ Elizabeth sends.

This is not good.  _Elizabeth,  
what is your  
last name?_

No response. He wonders if the other D. A. people are unable to reach for their coins but are itchy, wondering what the heck is going on. Well, he is too.

After a long pause, the coin finally displays,

_Where are you?_

_This is Lee. I'm  
on the run._

_Where is Dean?_

This is getting more and more bizarre.

_Dean Thomas?_

_Yes!_

_Who are you?_

_This is Dean's  
mother now._

Dean Thomas...of course, he's a Muggleborn. Did he just leave the Galleon at home?  _How did you  
find this coin?_

_Elizabeth  
did. My  
daughter.  
It was in  
his room._  
He thinks she's done, but she isn't.  
 _He sent us  
owls every  
once in a  
while but  
they don't  
come anymore.  
Do you know  
where he is?_

_I don't know.  
But he was  
on the run  
with a few  
men who are  
dead now. But  
we think he  
escaped._

She interjects before he can say any more.

_If he's dead  
You can tell us._

What?

_I don't know.  
If I did know  
anything I  
would tell you._

_Okay. Thank  
you._

_I_..."host" sounds too pretentious now.  
 _run a radio  
show. I will  
ask people  
if they know  
where he is  
and have them  
send you an owl.  
_

_Okay. Thank  
you._

_  
_


	9. Aberforth

Aberforth does not look entirely pleased to see Angelina show up in the middle of the Hog's Head. Or maybe that displeasure is directed at Katie. Or Alicia. Or...several Weasleys.

"Charlie here?" Katie asks Bill Weasley, who laughs.

"We've sent word, I'm not sure if he can get here in time."

"Maybe he'll ride in on a dragon," Angelina suggests.

"Hey, if it worked for Harry..." Alicia trails off.

"Fred and George are down there," Bill says, following his parents and—is that his  _wife_? Fleur  _Delacour—_ into the painting. "And so's Lee Jordan, come on."

"Lions reunion," grins Katie. "Let's go."

But Angelina is reaching for her pocket, digging past the coin. "Not quite."

"Huh?" says Alicia. "Ron Weasley must be down there too."

"Think a little older school," says Angelina, extracting a small two-way mirror. "OLIVER!"

Aberforth isn't amused by this, either.

"Sorry," she mutters. "C'mon."

A few moments pass, and she waves to the others. "On three. OLIVER!" This time they join her. She waits, nervously, and a few minutes later she can hear his muttered voice. "What the heck? Phoe—I mean, who are you?"

"Behind the toilet, Oliver."

Alicia and Katie are wide-eyed, but a few moments later his face comes into view. "What the heck is going on?"

"I did tell you you ought to clean your bathroom more."

"This has been here for...three months?"

"Yes. But never mind that, we're making a fight of it. Harry's back at Hogwarts. Apparate to the Hog's Head."

"Me? I can't fight."

"You paid attention in Defense Against the Dark Arts."

"Cause it had "Defense" in the name, but come on."

"Angelina, come on," Alicia is nagging.

"Oliver," she says. "This is it. Harry's back and—whether you think you can help it or not, if you don't come and things go south, are you ever going to forgive yourself?"

He pauses but she knows she's got him. "Give me a minute. Have to pop over to Wigan first."

"Wigan?" Katie echoes. But a minute later he's there. "Right. Okay. Let's go."

"It's a Lions reunion!" George grins when they reach the end of the tunnel. "Any words of wisdom for us, Captain?"

Oliver opens his mouth, and immediately his teeth start chattering, teeth bouncing up to teeth.

"It's never to late to learn the value of keeping things short, I'd say," George smiles. "Good to see you again."


	10. Michael

Michael Corner falls, the green—almost yellow—ooze spreading across his chest. His mouth twitches, but only a few inarticulate groans come out, and he lies still.

Kevin barely has time to take it in before he is running after the Death Eater. " _Stupe_ — _Impedi_ — _Stupe_ —"

His words barely make it out of his mouth; with a flick of his wand the Death Eater silences him. He pauses a moment, as if annoyed at Kevin for wasting his time by making the Death Eater dispose of him.

That second is all it takes for a Stunning spell to catch him in the chest. Immediately, Kevin focuses on a wordless  _Incarcerous_.

" _Finite_ ," a weak voice mutters, but the Silencing Charm is still in effect. Kevin follows it, pointing to his throat, and an even feebler " _Finite_ " is somehow effective.

In an instant he sees why the young woman's voice is so faint. Two pinpricks of yellow ooze, one for each foot.

" _Finite_ ,  _finite_ ," she anxiously repeats.

" _Finite_!" he bellows with full strength, but to no avail. "Dark magic, doesn't work that way."

He glances toward the Death Eater—would killing him break the curse?—but he's already been carried away.

Her feet are misshapen now, and she trembles uncontrollably. She reaches for her wand, but winces and only sends up sparks.

"This was what they hit Michael with," he says. "I'm sorry."

Not really expecting it to work, he casts a numbing spell on one of her legs. She nods, then taps the other one. Hurriedly, he repeats it.

The tension goes out of her shoulders as she leans against the grass. Maybe the Death Eaters didn't bother to guard the curse against numbing spells because it didn't matter. Her legs are mangled up to her knees, and though the pain is gone for the moment, when the ooze reaches her heart...

"It's okay," he can see her mouth. "We tried."

"No," he says, remembering the blank shock as Michael tumbled backward, "No, you don't get to give up."

She is too weak to shake her head and he grips his wand with a vengeance. Not literally, there are other Death Eaters to be fought, but he needs to act right now.

"Hold still," he says, not like she can go anywhere. Hoping the numbing spell is still in effect, as it doesn't look like he has time to recast it, with a slicing motion he whispers " _Diffindo. Congeo! Diffindo. Congeo!_ "

The rush of skin around two uneven wounds is flimsy, but it seems to be holding. She props herself up, blinking, and watches as the ooze continues to creep up her legs, now lying harmlessly on the grass.

"That would have been the rest of you in about five minutes," he says gruffly. She is still woozy, not quite aware of what's going on. "Stay put, okay?" he says. "You're gonna need someone else to look at that, hopefully Madam Pomfrey is around."

"What about you?"

"I think there are more of them to take out." He nods at the castle. "I'll kill some extra for you."

His body is scarred almost beyond recognition, afterwards, but when Alicia squints she can tell that yes, Kevin Boot was the one who saved her life. She had not known his name. She does not know if he knew hers.


	11. Fred

Fred Weasley is dead.

He wouldn't have wanted to die  _here_ , here where he escaped from and never planned on returning. That's insightful. Something an announcer would say.

He takes a few minutes to remember where he is. The Slytherin boys dormitory for the class of 2 mod 7. The only reason students have the same beds each year is because the first years replace the last class to leave, and the house affiliations of the returners were so disproportionate that people slept anywhere. Impartial, finally, Lee went wherever they pointed.

Making his way upstairs and knocking over half the common room furniture in the process, Lee wanders unsure whether he's looking for George or not. When he finds him, Bill grasping his little brother closely, Lee decides that the answer is "not."

He takes off just quickly enough to keep quiet, with a vague idea of going back for his equipment once he's far enough away to Apparate. But, says Ravenclaw Lee, there's no point in reporting the news when everyone who would listen is right there.  _Everyone who can hear me_ , he thinks.

"Lee!"

Seraph. No. It is time for reality.

"You..." So he can't know, Hufflepuff Lee suddenly realizes, how close Fred and Angelina were, Fred because he's dead and Angelina because he is too proud to ask her, not as long as she refuses to take him seriously. "You should stay. For George."

_So should you_ , thinks Gryffindor Lee, but Slytherin Lee feels the words die in his throat.


	12. Bob

Bob Ollerton, along with his brothers Bill and Barnaby, founded the Cleansweep Broom Company in 1926. Since that time, twelve editions have been released. The thirteenth is coming soon. A few critics say that twelve was a bit of a letdown from eleven; others, however, say that expectations for twelve were overinflated and it was a modest but respectable improvement.

Oliver has never had much time for comparison between broomsticks. There are obvious ones, sure, Firebolts are in a class of their own. For the most part, still, he thinks that people who go on about it too long are just trying to excuse away their own ineptitude. He'll scrupulously research the different options should he ever need to buy a new broom, to be sure, and even glance ahead to see how fast his opponents might be going, but by and large he's not one to list the pros versus cons.

Until now.

He's bought a copy of  _Which Broomstick_  and underlined things, anything to be able to write a letter. He fills three pages. This is not saying incredibly much. His handwriting is big and blocky, that of a child who'd want to quickly meet the minimum guidelines for school essays and then move on to bigger and better things.

Fred is dead and George has lost an ear but apparently that's not new because Oliver was never in touch with him. Tessa is dead and Phoebe has lost an archrival who became a roommate who became a friend and now half-regrets  _that_. Alicia has no legs but she's going back to work for Cleansweep any week now and she's an expert on brooms, so Oliver writes about brooms.


	13. Audrey

Audrey Ban beats the rap on a technicality. She had not been informed, she pointed out, that the man she was giving the firecracker to was a Muggle. Which, Arthur fumes, is no excuse, as Muggles don't know they're Muggles. Nevertheless, she's just legally savvy enough to get off scot-free.

She gets wise and doesn't sic anything too ridiculous on Muggles again, but he hears her name every now and then. Someone has Transfigured all the regulations in the Department of Magical Games and Sports into Ancient Runic. Everyone in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures receives an order, signed by their superior, ordering they had been officially transferred to the Centaur Liaison Office. Interdepartmental memorandums begin singing.

"I'd have had her fired two months ago," Arthur is told, "but we can't prove it's her. That, and she brightens up everyone's dark-cursed day."

Week after week, he is tempted to hunt her down and introduce her to George (he's asked around at the joke shop and nobody recognizes her). Week after week, he commits, and then he sees George with Angelina. First they just fly, long distances on separate brooms, George needing to do something physical and Angelina keeping pace. Then it is just them sitting down, in equal silence, and still he hesitates...

He never suspects that Audrey might be the perfect match for another son of his, a son learning how to laugh again, a son who appreciates the letter of the law.


	14. Jack

Jack Sloper and Alicia Spinnet hadn't crossed paths since she left school, but there he is, sputtering off some stupid condolence again. She wants to hex him.

There've been a lot of people she wants to hex, to be honest.

George would tell her to take a minute, find some creative and more slower way to have her way. Angelina would tell her to think about the consequences. Katie would join her, Oliver wouldn't really understand why she wanted to do it, Fred...

Is this good or bad, that she thinks she knows her friends so well? Good that she's had these people for years, been close to them, knows them like the back of her hand? Or bad that she can easily parrot off what they sound like, a sign that she knows them only on some superficial, glib level?

Fred would,  _would_ , hex people for her, if she wanted.

Lee would say something about "and there's Spinnet, Spinnet with her wand at the ready, go on Alicia, hex the git already." Dear Lee.

So, very casually, she begins learning hexes. Generic things, that she can practice on houseplants. There's no shortage of houseplants if she wants any, ideally ones that grow low to the ground. This isn't like the D.A., where she'd learned to defend herself from actual threats. No, this is to defend herself against so-called friends—or at least, know that she could.

She makes a pigeon grow antlers, scalps a squirrel, and casts Densaugeo on an ant, which is  _really_  grotesque. She puts them right back afterwards, more for her own conscience than the thought that the Ministry's paying attention. Then again, allowing people to catch her at work might put a stop to the pity for good.


	15. Victoire

Victoire Weasley is born on the second of May, 2000, so that's George's plans made then. He has to hand it to Bill and Fleur for excellent timing; he and Ron are becoming uncles for the first time, and Harry and Hermione as good as, and it's a perfect excuse just to hang out with family. No big speeches, no solemn silences, no muffled tears. Not like ninety-nine.

2001, though—Fleur's getting kind of big again, but not big enough to create new plans. A couple Weasleys talk about throwing a big birthday party for Victoire, just to get away from all the memorial stuff again, but she's a year old and has no idea what's going on.

Verity has already made plans for the night before, something involving a Muggle boyfriend, the workers of the world, and copious amounts of alcohol. There are a couple more new employees he could try and go out with, to be sure, but that just feels a little weird.

So gradually, he sends out a couple feelers, and Angelina suggests getting together with, uh, "maybe like, Katie? And we could invite Alicia too, I dunno if she gets out much. And then, maybe we could see if there was anyone they wanted to bring."

"Might as well bring Lee along," he ventures cautiously.

"Suppose so. Is he still at the WWN?"

"Think so, I run into him once in a while and he's always complaining about it."

"Fair enough."

And Oliver shows up too, because he and Alicia are sort of pen friends. (" _Pen friends_?" George echoes, but he knows what Angelina means.) Charlie is still in Romania, of course, and has an excuse not to bother with the non-festivities, Harry has to get up early the next morning but that's okay, it's not a reunion and it can't be. But they still find themselves packed into the Three Broomsticks, late Tuesday night.

They're quiet, at first, until Angelina has a couple pints and starts breaking into some classic Pride of Portree fan songs. Lee attempts to harmonize with her, which he's in no fit state to do, but which amuses Alicia anyway. Oliver claims not to recognize any of the songs, but he proves to be a remarkably quick study and by the end of the night is joining them in full voice.

People give them a few weird looks. George's head isn't quite clear enough to see in the darkness, though Alicia's chair is and that's what eventually gives them a wide enough berth to carry on, late into the evening and finally onto the morning of the second. George and Lee recognize that it's gone past midnight first (Katie might have, but she was by then in the bathroom); Lee looks at George and nods. "Think yer niece is awake for her birthday, then?"

"Spect so," says George, "cryin'."

"'Ser birthday, innit?" says Lee. "She's got the right to cry."

"'Sright, sright," George nods. "I cried on my birthday. I got the right to do that."


	16. Justin

Justin Finch-Fletchley is about the nicest man Alicia has ever met.

At first it seems—why wouldn't it?—like that's a good thing. She has to go to the Ministry one day for a meeting in the Broom Regulatory Control office; unfortunately, it's a crowded lift and very bulky to get in. Then a young man magically doubles the floor area, to the pleasure of the other riders. Avoiding eye contact with her, he keeps riding down and exits with her and a couple others on Level 6, but immediately heads for another door.

"Those are the stairs," one of the other men points out.

"Oh I know," he grins. "Faster than walking than waiting for the lift to turn around though, isn't it?" And he steps through the door.

Alicia's sure she's seen him before, though—he's maybe two or three years below her, at Hogwarts. After a couple hours of displaying Cleansweep prototypes, she's able to make her way back up, and sure enough there he is again.

"Hello," she ventures, "I can't place your name, but...were you in the D. A., by chance?"

"Ah, yes!" he smiles, shaking her hand. "Justin Finch-Fletchley, and you were...er, I'm so very sorry. Al...Alice?"

"Close enough. Alicia Spinnet."

"Ah. Brilliant to run into you again, I must admit I'd rather fallen out of touch with some of the old lags. Well. Er. Quite a few of them, that is to say."

"It's no problem," she says, "I haven't been keeping in touch with them either."

"Fair's fair, then," he says.

"Right. Er." She glances around; the fireplaces are too small to wheel into. "How do you, er, page the box?"

"Sorry," he smiles politely, "come again?"

"The, er, box. To get up to the visitors' entrance. How do I get out of here?"

"Oh!" Flustered, he blushes. "Ah...I...well, this is utterly ridiculous, yes. I'll see what can be done."

Out of the corner of her eye, she notices someone leaving for lunch. "I can't just  _Apparate_  out of here, can I?"

"I, I'm not sure. If...I mean, that is to say,  _one_ , one can Apparate out of here."

"Oh, so it's not like school then?" she says. "Brilliant, thanks."

And with that, she's back in her flat.

A few days later, she regrets blowing him off so brusquely—as hesitant as he was, it was nice to talk for someone who wasn't from work. No sooner has this thought crossed her mind than an owl reaches her at work—it was Justin, who feels like informing her that he's spoken to his superiors about making the transportation policy clearer.

Pleased, Alicia replies and pretty soon they're meeting in Diagon Alley for lunch. She's a bit forward, appreciating the contact on some level more than she knows, and so is he, eager to please. His face is much more vivid than her co-workers, even if she only sees him once a week or so; curly hair and brown, fervent eyes. She realizes later on it's because he's always making eye contact with her, and that  _that's_  because, somehow, when he isn't sitting he's found a way to lean back casually and, without her catching on, be there at her eye level.


	17. Bill

Bill Weasley doesn't offer his wedding planning services until he stops into the shop one day and sees Angelina's hair, tied up in a high bun. "No braid today?"

"No, owls can eat hair more easily when it's down."

"Fair enough," he laughs. "I won't ask."

"She's not lying, mate," says George. "Had to go back and forth and back and forth before deciding whether we were going to mail an owl. Got a bit peeved, he did, and...went to town."

"Do I want to know who you were mailing?"

"Er, not mailing, in the end, we decided against it. But...Alicia Spinnet."

"Alicia...oh! Your friend from the Quidditch team! I'm sure she'd love for you to drop by, why don't you go visit her?"

The couple glance at each other. "That's not a bad idea," says George. "You can ask her in person."

"If I ask in person, she might feel pressured to accept..."

"Which is what you want her to do..."

"Sorry," Bill cuts in, "am I missing something?"

"Well, as far as the wedding goes," says George. "We were thinking Alicia could be Angelina's maid of honor, maybe. But we think she doesn't really want to."

"She doesn't like weddings," Angelina explains. "And we're just not sure how to arrange things, whether we want to include Lee, or Katie, or..."

"Oh," Bill says quietly. "Well, there's no reason you need to have the same number of bridesmaids and groomsmen. Fleur and I had Charlie, Ginny, and Gabrielle as our attendants, that worked out just fine."

"Katie and Alicia, then," says George, "both of them together, you three were inseparable anyway."

"Were," Angelina hears. "Eloping is looking like a better and better option."


	18. Molly

Molly Weasley tries to hold back a "tut" as Lee makes another off-color remark about George's adventures tickling the Giant Squid.

He's on a roll. Next up is something about the Age Line for the Goblet of Fire, that gets an appreciative nod from some of the guests. It's the best man's speech, and he just has one hilarious anecdote to recount after another.

When he thinks back on George, George  _alone_ , there aren't so many of those adventures. Quieter moments, such as standing up to Slytherins in the hallway or trying to cheer up his little sister. It's the gentle side of George on display here, next to Angelina. The side that's supposed to be there at weddings. Boring.

They want something else. They want stories about, although none of them will say it, the Weasley twins, the Weasley twins and the third wheel, Lee Jordan. So he tells them, over-the-top exaggerations that have nothing to do with who  _George_  really is. Ginny snorts, as Lee goes all out, hoping the laughter will drown out the fact that it shouldn't be him here, he should never have been George's best man.


	19. Brendan

Brendan edges up to Lee during lunch break on a Friday. "Well? Will you be here Monday?"

It's a bit blunt, and as journalists they should both know better, but Lee has had his mind made up for a while now. "No."

Brendan smiles. "Good man. A few of us are meeting for drinks Sunday night to celebrate, you know, you're welcome if you'd like to come but we won't be talking anything too serious."

"I think I'll skip," says Lee, "but thanks for the offer."

"Fair enough." Brendan offers a big, doughy hand which Lee shakes inattentively.

He packs up to leave work that afternoon and looks the same as everyone else, down to (though he cannot see his own) the furtive smile of unspoken excitement. For the first time in a while, there is something to be excited about at work.

Not something at work to be excited about. There is a difference.

He thinks about packing more, once he gets back, but he's going to travel light and winds up taking a nap. He wakes up in the evening and throws everything together. Might as well leave now.

They are going on strike, Brendan and the others are, strike for better  _pay_. Or some kind of health benefits. These are the people who've been working at WWN for years, right through the months of propaganda, without blinking. They have nothing to complain about.

And neither does he. His best friend just got married to the woman he loves, who loves him back. Good for them. Lee has nothing to complain about.

He waits a couple hours until traffic dies down, then Apparates to a Euston Station bathroom he's scoped out. It's empty. Good.

Then he quietly makes his way out the door, luggage in tow, and looks for one of the unnaturally-numbered platforms. They're there if you can find them, after all—the trolley lady on the Hogwarts Express doesn't get paid for two trips a year.


	20. Leanne

Leanne is breeding Kneazles, or something. Truthfully, Katie doesn't know.

"So you see what I mean?" says Alicia. "Not everyone goes through life with exactly the same people."

"You're right, you're right." Katie spears her spaghetti. "I just...someone who has  _nothing_  in common with me. Never put on the Sorting Hat. Never saw a Quidditch game. Never worried about O.W.L.s."

"Okay, that's not  _nothing_ ," says Alicia, "you said you met him at a choir practice, yes?"

"Yes, but—"

"So that's something you have in common. Look, if it doesn't work out it doesn't work out, but you clearly are obsessed with this Ricky—"

"Richard—"

"Precisely, ask him on a date already. Merlin's whiskers, it's not that hard."

"All right, all right. So what's new with you?"

Alicia gives a twitch of a shrug. "You know." It's said too slowly to be there to be filling space. Katie  _knows_ , or is supposed to, how boring Alicia's life is.

"Hmm. You ever go out to any Muggle films or anything? They're a little backwards of course but it's sort of neat getting to see how they do it with techynology, they've got lots of tricks and they can get a little more done than simply a play would allow, I've been to a couple of those and they're—am I rambling?"

"Yes," Alicia laughs, "but that's not a bad thing."


	21. Verity

Verity keeps track of mail-in orders. They get sent from all over. Some have homes to be mailed to, in northern Scotland or somewhere out of the way. Some have post office boxes.

And then there are a few that have no return address but various rented birds ready to make the last leg of a several-step trip. The currency is also different, with scrawled attachments of  _Keep however much you need, I trust you to convert and make change_ , but from disparate countries every time. And the requests are all so different. Two dozen Extendable Ears to Romania, a Wildfire Whiz-bang to Cuba, "largest Shield Cloak still in stock and if you have any metal rods longer than a foot please send—if you do not have do not bother to order—this is urgent thank you" along several light green gems—Chinese? Korean?—she didn't think had been legal tender since the Third Goblin Rebellion.

The handwriting on all of these, strangely, is the same.

And everywhere he goes, Lee broadcasts, because before there was Voldemort and Potterwatch there was Umbridge. For every Dark Lord getting in people's way there are twelve bureaucrats ready to be almost as stringent should they get the chance. Wizards help out, across the world, behind the scenes, when it's Muggles getting in Muggles' way. And when it's wizards in wizards' way, there is Lee Jordan, speaking truth to the powerless.

A step ahead of whatever's coming, he moves on. Not to stay ahead of the authorities—they won't find him. But because things might get too violent, one day, and he might lose someone he cares about if he stays too long. And even in the best-case scenario, there will be room for change but he won't know what to do because he's not the kind of person who stayed at WWN. He knows how to tear down, but not how to build up. So, really, it's just prank after prank after prank.


	22. Roger

Roger and Mary, middle-aged Muggles with a couple young children, are glad to sell Alicia the house. It's a nice house, she has to admit. She hadn't looked for anywhere to live since before the war, she'd just been staying in that same flat partly because she was too stubborn to be forced out of it. But Justin gives her the idea, and she has to admit it's a pretty good one. He even helps her change the money—there are benefits to dating an upper-class Muggle-born in the Muggle Liaison Office.

The only thing is, she thinks Justin imagined him living there with her. So did she, at one point. But it's unraveling, and she might as well cut things off before they get any closer.

He is distraught, of course, as she knew he would be and there's no easy way to explain. Because he's been the perfect gentleman and it's still not really her fault. He is  _too_  kind,  _too_  doting,  _too_  quick to rush to her aid and at the same time defer to her lead when they're deciding where to eat or what to do. If he was just a quiet man that would be fine but he shrinks back from suggesting anything he isn't absolutely confident she can do, while stammering when the fact comes up that yes, there are things she really  _can't_  do. So he winds up not knowing which is which, and slinking into the corner even when she's clamoring to do something a little more exciting. (There are also, she knows, certain other things that husbands and wives do and that, she guesses, Justin is going to be a little too reluctant to pursue with her as she is. This might influence her decision, as well.)


	23. Richard

Richard hands her the box which she opens, halfway, and bursts into tears. They don't seem to be unhappy tears, and as he's never done this before he doesn't  _think_  they're exactly tears of jubilation, but he's not entirely sure.

"Oh, Richard," Katie breaths. "I...ah. I, I  _want_ , I  _want_  to marry you but...ah. There's, there's a chance I'll...have, have to go away soon. Some...familial obligations. But I do love you, I do. Please, this is sudden, I didn't understand..."

There is nothing he can do for her, not even reach out and touch her to show by his body that all will be well. Not if this is about to fail, he doesn't want to make things any more worse in retrospect.

"Give me a week, okay?" she says. "To look into things. To make up my mind."

"I'll give you as long as you need," he promises, and she reads his face as if he's being too rash.

He does not see her for the next eight days, does not even think to text or e-mail her, and not just because he was the one who had to teach her how to use a mobile phone and he can't see a :) without remembering a five-minute conversation that turned into a two-hour one.

And then, she is back, exhaling. "All right. Er. I...I still want to marry you. Very much. There's just one thing."

"Anything."

She draws the shades and for one wild moment he makes a completely wrong guess as to what this is about. It's about...

_magic_.

"You can..." he gasps, trailing off because he really doesn't know how far she can go. "Have you ever used magic on me?"

"Absolutely not," she says. "And never will, even if we're married. Everything you know about me is still true...I grew up in Kent, I'm keen on music, I've heard all the puns. I'm just...also...a witch." She swallows. "I won't say this doesn't change anything because that's not fair to you. But...I still want to marry you. If you'll have me."

He pauses.

"If we...have children? Will they be...like you?"

"Yes," she sighs. "Yes, and I'd...I'd want them to get an education at the school I went. It'd be a boarding school—we'd be able to afford it," she says at his face, "it's not  _that_  kind of a place, but they'd...be away from home for the better part of seven years."

"Seven?"

"They'd start late, we'd send them to a normal school first."

He sighs, pacing. "Why didn't you tell me? Before?"

"I can't. I'm supposed to keep it secret except in very special circumstances. Marriage is one of them, obviously."

"So does this mean we have to get married now? Since you've shown me?"

"No. But you'd have to keep your mouth shut. I suppose I could arrange for your memory of this conversation to be removed. Only if you wanted, though," she rushes to add.

"That's not encouraging," he says. "But I'll think about it."

He thinks about it, and thinks about it, and can't stop thinking about it. And then three days later he realizes it's her that he can't stop thinking about, and so, they get engaged.


	24. Hermione

Hermione and Ginny are even farther along than Angelina, and they still have to go to the tenth anniversary ceremonies, so there's no excuse for Angelina and George not to go. Except the one that Oliver comes up with—"who cares about ten? It's seven that's the most powerfully magical number."

"I must've been pregnant with Fred by then," says Angelina, "even though we didn't know it yet."

"And twelve, twelve is pretty powerful too."

Angelina and George glance at each other. "I think we won't have that excuse two years from now," George slowly ventures. "We've got enough Weasleys for the present."

"Do you? Really?" says Oliver. "Let me see, any idea whether this one'll be a boy or a girl?"

"No," says Angelina.

"Hmm. Run me through the list."

He listens, attentively, breaking into a smile at the end. "Don't you realize the problem?"

"What problem?" says George. No one insults his family.

"Not a  _probl_ _em,_  per se, just...you said Bill has two daughters? And so does Percy?"

"Bill has a son and two daughters."

"All right. Then Ron and Hermione, that'll be their second, and yours...unless this one is a boy, the only two Weasley  _brothers_  of this generation will be  _Potters_!"

"Times change, don't they?" says Katie, who's found a place in the row behind them, right in the side aisle. "Can't expect everything to be the same."

George gives a stiff nod. Angelina says, "D'you want to go out, afterwards? To the Three Broomsticks again?"

"Everyone'll be at the Three Broomsticks, let's try the Hog's Head."

They have to shut up as Minister Shacklebolt is saying something which, to his credit, he manages to keep short. The gist of the matter is that, back in eighty-one, Voldemort was defeated in secret, by a woman who died and a baby who knew nothing of what he had done for ten years. In ninety-eight, however, Voldemort was defeated by a bunch of people and that's why they all come together to celebrate. ("But we don't," George hisses as they leave, "look at all those people, they weren't there.") And, apparently, light Patronuses together. Katie's is a whisp that looks like it might be an Augurey; and Angelina and George both have similar-looking blurs that could be Pygmy Puffs. When half the room is trying and coming out with little more than mist, the overall effect is gray and almost dismal in its own way. Still, Alicia's Diricawl is particularly corporeal and rather brilliant.

She's ready to have a few drinks. Apparently the man she just broke up with got nervous when she drank a lot and it's more a matter of spite than desire. Charlie is around for the ceremony, which is the first one he's attended for six years, but wants to get some sleep before he catches the Portkey back. Harry is going to go talk to portraits or something weird. Lee Jordan, of all people, apparently took a Portkey with Charlie from Romania and yet doesn't want to go back with him, so he joins the others on their way to the Hog's Head.


	25. Mundungus

Mundungus is drunk in a corner when they arrive, and it's a pretty full if quiet place. Katie thinks this is evidence that the Three Broomsticks would have been even worse, Angelina doesn't, but there's no way of settling the matter so they sit down.

They've already eaten, Angelina's not drinking because of the baby, Oliver barely drinks anything anyway, so mostly it's just them talking to each other. Katie Apparates home to write a note to her husband explaining she'll be home late, then returns. "This texting business is completely useless—where I really need it, it doesn't work." Then she has to try and explain Muggle technology to them.

They suggest a couple names for the new baby, working under the assumption that it'll be a girl. "Fred" the last time around was almost too easy, though they all know they're lucky not to have anyone else they can obviously name it after. "Something new," Alicia says, which gets Lee started on a whole bunch of random foreign-sounding names. Before Oliver can launch into a summary of the season so far Angelina asks Lee what, exactly, he was doing in Romania and the answer to  _that_  takes up most of the evening. Romania was just a stopover, he'd actually been in Sri Lanka for most of the year before that, and before  _that_...

"You've been ordering from the joke shop, haven't you!" George cuts in once he gets to the part about bartering with the Runespoor eggs.

"Well, yeah," says Lee. "It's a bit difficult, not actually knowing what you have in stock, but that makes it more entertaining. To a point."

"Are you trying to...I mean, that just sounds really dangerous," says Katie. "Didn't you work for WWN?"

"Yeah, but I didn't like it there too much. I know, I know, I'm good at radio. Still am, if I do say so myself," he winks. "It's just not the same."

This is commentary, really, launching into the story of how he commandeered a flying carpet in Iran. Only difference is that he talks in the past tense ("Angelina scores" came a couple seconds after she actually did it), and so he can't flirt directly with the people there. Not that some of the women on the other flying carpets weren't rather attractive. But the few dating opportunities he found didn't exactly work well. Maybe he didn't quite catch on to the local cultures, or something.

"...and I think I'm off to Burma, next, or whatever it's called. That's why I'm not going with Charlie, found another Portkey that should get me most of the way there."

"Wow," says Alicia. "That sounds amazing."

Angelina looks worried. "Take care. That sounds very...hectic."

"Since when have you gone soft?" Since when has she cared?

"Well, I mean, having a baby makes you paranoid."

"Hear that, Katie?" Alicia says.

"Wait, what?" asks Oliver. "Did I miss something?"

"No," Katie laughs, "Alicia just likes to tease."

The bar is thinning out, and most of the people who haven't left yet clearly won't be leaving for a while. But George and Angelina do have a toddler to get back to (one of her Portree friends is babysitting), and the others clear out as well.

"Same time next year?" Lee suggests.

"I thought you said you didn't make plans," Angelina points out.

"I'll make an exception for you."

"Seems fair."

Neither of them are really sure whether "you" was supposed to be singular or plural.


	26. Benjamin

Benjamin and Richard went to university together—Richard is one of four kids but he's eight years younger than his only brother, and they were never all  _that_  close growing up, so it's Benjamin he turns to to be his best man. Katie thinks it over for a long time, and Richard promises he won't be offended if he chooses a witch or anything. It's not his opinion she's really worried about, though.

Because from the outside they looked close, Katie and Alicia and Angelina, and even farther away even people who didn't know how close friends they were just saw them as teammates. Confound the rules of Quidditch and the need for three Chasers—and yet, there is nothing about their friendship she can regret.

Thankfully, Angelina has already been down this road. "Going insane yet?"

"Er. Sorry. Am I that out of it?"

"No, I mean with the wedding preparations and all. Nearly lost it myself."

"Oh. Well, it's still quite tricky, I'm trying to...never mind that. I think it'll be fine, I've found a nice dress that's not too expensive."

"Oh. That's good. George and I were so busy working out who to invite for what..." Katie had wound up being the sole bridesmaid after all.

"We haven't settled that either," Katie says, and they both laugh. "Were you expecting me to reciprocate?"

"Ressiwhat now?"

"Er, to be my bridesmaid?"

"I wasn't expecting anything! Merlin, Katie, it's your wedding, and Richard's, invite whoever you feel like."

A shadow crosses Katie's mouth.

"Alicia?"

"I just can't tell, she's so hard to read sometimes."

"You two were always closer. Might as well venture it."

She does, and Alicia—this time around—accepts. Richard is charmed by her and her nonchalant confidence that she could turn him into a newt, and she feels at ease among Muggles—surprisingly, Angelina thinks, for someone who grew up in a magical household. But then comes the wedding a Muggle one, and there are Benjamin and Alicia. A friend of the groom's and a friend of the bride's, no one expects them to be anything more, there are some things that just can't be done. Muggles understand. And Angelina is happy for her friends.


	27. Teddy

Teddy Lupin is the star of the speech for the following year, although George can't tell whether he's actually present or not. Again, something about how he'll be starting Hogwarts the next year and...there's some sort of point in it, which George eventually gives up on trying to place. At least there's no Patronus ceremony that time.

No one thinks to invite anyone else, or if they do they don't mention it—it's just the six of them, again. Lee goes on a while, feeling at ease for a change—he's been most recently in Fiji. Which is hot, he hastens to add, not wanting to sound too glamorous, and reception is terrible so he can't tell if he'll be staying long. He's glad he's back, he has some joke supplies he wants to stock up on at the joke shop and elsewhere.

"What kind of elsewhere?" says Katie.

"Oh, nowhere you need to know about," he says. "What? It's legal. And even if it wasn't, I'm not staying in the country long am I?"

Angelina and George have two kids to look after, now, which means at least twice as many anecdotes to share. The relationship appears to be nonlinear; there are Fred moments and Roxanne moments and sibling moments, though they focus on the new baby. Angelina had thought to bring pictures, as Lee and Oliver hadn't met her yet, and both smile when the baby in the photo rolls over.

Little Fred, apparently, doesn't bother with the last syllable and calls her Rockus. Rock-us is perhaps stretching things a bit, but as a cross between Ruckus and Raucous it seems pretty relevant for the first nine months.

Oliver's life can be followed pretty easily through the papers. "That's one bad thing about jumping around," says Lee, "You can't get any of the papers, although the  _Prophet_ 's kind of trash and the _Quibbler_  doesn't cover sports really." Katie's going to a concert for music with experimental magical instruments and Oliver wants to come along; George does, also, until he finds out that the instruments will not be available for purchase. He'd sent Lee some photos of Katie's wedding with the last joke shop special order but they wind up talking about that again.

It's only memories of the past year, but they remember together anyway.


	28. Percy

Percy says he can definitely watch the kids while they go out. Angelina needs a minute to remember. "Were we going out?"

"Were we?" says George. "I thought with the—Lee's back in town, you know, he always comes back for this, that we were going out." It's just the third year, well fourth really, but that's apparently enough to be "always."

"For this? Surely there's something else more worth coming back for, when's his birthday?"

"Er, January I think."

They'd never agreed on it, never spelled it out, but there they all are anyway. Even Oliver, who really doesn't seem to like the memorial ceremonies at all, is there just so he knows when to meet up with them. It's not like they don't run into each other elsewhere, but never all six at once, and somehow it just feels right or they're too drunk to notice anything wrong, George can't tell. Always celebrating Victoire's birthday early in the afternoon or on the nearest weekend helps, keeps the nights clear. Then the night goes foggy.

_There's someone dazed and laughing, out to his left, Katie Bell he thinks it is and next to her is, is that Alicia Spinnet? She looks kind of short. And there's Lee Jordan, of course, Lee's always there. "C'mon, Angelina, you know you want to try it," he says._

" _Not a chance, Jordan," she just brushes it off, doesn't even take time to process whatever he'd said._

" _Come on, you guys, knock it off," Wood's a wet blanket really, can't let them just relax and do stupid things once in a while._

" _Oi, Angelina," Lee echoes, "c'mon."_

" _Knock it off," says Katie, "can't you shee? Lookit. She's with Fred."_

The next thing he knows, someones are screaming and his glass has shattered in his fist.

"George. George!" says Angelina. "She's drunk, leave her be. Let's get the Floo out of here."

Oliver, furious, forks over an extra Galleon for the cup and mutters something about finding Lee's Portkey out of the country. Alicia slurs something about Katie not being on the Floo network, and how's she going to get back. George says something he won't remember in the morning about Alicia being one to talk. Angelina shoves him through the fireplace. Alicia flags down the Knight Bus for Katie. Katie vomits several times on the short ride back. Angelina steps after George. Percy decides against volunteering to look after the kids again.


	29. Roxanne

Roxanne is old enough to sleep through the night, thankfully, so Angelina and George don't have to talk until the next morning. Monday. "They should make  _this_ the holiday," he says, "as we'll all have been sleeping in."

"It's too bad for people who work with Muggles and can't really explain why they're taking the day off," Angelina says. "Poor Katie."

It was a feeler, and it felt its way to the mark. "No. Not poor Katie. Merlin's briefs, Ang, she doesn't understand."

Angelina keeps quiet for a second because he's right, Katie doesn't understand. Neither does she, and neither does anybody they know. Maybe one of the Patil girls for eight desperate minutes twelve years ago, but Angelina isn't sure whether whichever it was ever realized.

"I...there are days when I  _don't_  think about him, sometimes," says George. "Days I'm just swamped in the shop, or...I guess not. I guess seeing Freddie is enough. Why did we ever name him that?"

Angelina isn't quite sure how to respond. They'd never considered anything else.

He is five years old, and at the top of the stairs. "Mommy? Daddy? I want breakfast."

"I'll do it," says George, and when Angelina opens her mouth, " _I'll_  do it." Resolutely, he begins attacking a grapefruit for himself, back stubbornly to everyone.

Angelina sighs, climbing the stairs and glancing at her son. His skin is a bit paler than Roxanne's, and he is tall for his age. The baby fat distorts her, of course, but Roxanne seems on pace to inherit a build a bit more like her father's and a skin tone more like her mother's, with Freddie the other way around. He's always been nice to his sister, if a little distant. She wonders, for the first time, if he'd be any different with any other name. Knowing there can be no answer, she continues upstairs.


	30. Hayes

Hayes is a Muggle so she can't tell him anything. She has anxiously read book after book, nothing indicating that there'd be any risk of accidental disclosure, and she wants Richard to be there, so she nervously goes to the Muggle hospital but at the first sign of trouble she begins to panic.

Richard, aghast, realizes he has to explain everything to someone who really doesn't understand and can't speak straightforwardly. He tells her he was delivered the same way, it's a safe and normal procedure, and still she can't bear the thought of them cutting her open.

"Do you want me to go talk to Mr. Bonham?" says her father. "On the tellymafone?"

At a glance from the nurse, he shrivels back, because Katie doesn't understand.

"Stay here, please," she whispers. "Go ahead, do, do whatever."

They put strange potions into her and hook her up to all sorts of wires. She's been scared out of her mind before, true, but that was when she could run and fight, could do something about it. This, here, she's helpless and she shouldn't be but Richard is here. Richard is here and that  _has_  to be enough because Muggles do it all the time, and still they're  _Muggles_ , and she screams and screams and

"Katie. Katie! Look at your baby. Katie, look at your baby," urges the nurse who's almost irritated.

Her baby. She has a baby.

Katie blinks. Her baby is screaming and kicking but that's apparently how it's supposed to be. Right then Katie doesn't care if she simply falls unconscious or if her cover is blown or if the baby is a Squib, for an instant, it's  _there_  and she's made it through.


	31. Vector

Vector could've explained why the twelfth anniversary had to be such a big deal. Some Arithmancy thing. Then comes the thirteenth, and they have to put something on because after the previous year, it feels like a tradition even to people who don't care. It can be smaller, though, and the fourteenth they can afford to skip altogether. And so, in two thousand and twelve, the only ceremony going on is a little second-year in Gryffindor Tower, opening her birthday presents. She quite likes spending her birthday away from home. People aren't so tense.

This doesn't prevent some former Gryffindors from meeting up, though. Lee's back in town, not having heard that this is the only reason to come back. Oliver's thrilled that it'll be just the Lions get-together, nothing else. Angelina has almost forgotten the incident of two years previously; they are beginning to blur together and she can't remember where Lee's been, when. George has not, but he doesn't let on.

It's Katie with pictures of baby Melinda to share, a few printouts. "I have more on my phone," she explains, "but it doesn't work." Lee is still impressed by it; after five minutes of his ogling, tilting it up to the light, and discovering the hatch on the back where you take the battery out, Katie has enough presence of mind to take it back before Lee starts investigating it with magic.

Katie, Angelina, and George start swapping child-raising advice. Alicia is a bit overwhelmed by their capacity to keep track of it all. Oliver is completely uninterested but finds himself hanging on every sound, if not every word; these gatherings mean a lot to him for some reason he doesn't really understand. Lee tries to imagine himself as a father, and can't do it unless his hypothetical child is, besides tall and dreadlocked, at least seven or eight and old enough to play Quidditch or have a sense of humor or take care of a pet or  _do_  something.

"How old ish Freddie, anyway?" he says. "Feel like I've lost track."

"Six."

"Brilliant. You shending him to Muggle school, then? Can't imagine a woman as active as yourself'd wanna stick around the house all day."

"So far, yes," she sighs. "I don't know, I think it's the right thing to do."

"Of course it is. He's a good student, he can read already," says George. "Controls his magic well, too. No signs of trouble."

"When you say controls..." Alicia trails off. She has heard rumors that one of the older Weasley children is making plans to stay at her Muggle school permanently. The rumors are actually true, and the Weasleys' onetime vague feelings of shame about Squib relatives have quite entirely vanished at the sight of their vivacious relative, but Alicia doesn't know that much yet.

"I mean there aren't any incidents or anything, he doesn't need magic to get what he wants. Fitting in well. He's a good kid." Who doesn't have that many Muggle friends to blab to, but George and Angelina don't know that much yet either.


	32. Zhang

Zhang refuses to give any other name, if Lee's highly limited Chinese is correct, but Lee suspects this might be just as well. He's being paid for photography, not networking.

Zhang, perhaps, seems to realize this, as he shakes his head at the flash.

"Sorry," says Lee, disabling the flash.

Zhang mutters something Lee can't quite make out, presumably that he has to be really ready to cast a Summoning Charm when the time comes. He nods. He will be.

There are two others flying around, whose names he has been forbidden to learn. He's gotten photos of one of them, before, which he left at the drop box for his Ministry contact. To their credit, the Chinese Ministry (or whatever they call it, he's not really sure how it translates) has gotten better at cracking down on poaching. But the illicit trade in dragon eggs...a lot of people have a lot of connections, and without pretty substantial evidence, nothing's really going to get done. It's a change of pace, working on the side of authority, but they've been so helpless it's almost like they're the underdogs.

He'll say this for Zhang and the others, they know how to synchronize their flight. Aiming as one, they send three Stunning Spells that mesh with each other and knock the Fireball out. Now it's his turn. Pivoting closer to the ground, he casts a Summoning Charm.

The egg is enormous, far larger than it looked from the ground. He grasps it, needing both arms to wrap around it, but he drops his camera. Not good at all. Maybe he can claim there's something else important on it, forget the egg, Zhang doesn't matter as long as the Ministry gets the photos. Angling towards the ground like a desperate Seeker, Lee accelerates, then—


	33. Chen

Chen, an old Healer, says something he can't quite make out when he wakes, to pain. Apparently he has to drink some potion. It's probably going to be horrid. Bracing himself, Lee is pleasantly surprised that it isn't. Not very tasty, but not as bad as he expected.

"Did the dragon get me?" he tries to ask in his very broken Chinese.

The Healer raises a finger to her lips, and from what it would make out, it sounds like he isn't supposed to talk about it. He fell off his broom and has been out for half a day. She's an old family friend of...of one of the other men he was flying with and agreed to fix him up. He needs to stay in bed for a long time, his body's been through a lot and besides, China and Jamaica don't really have a stable Portkey connection.

He laughs because he definitely catches that word. His jaw hurts. "I'm from England."

She's confused. She'd been told he'd come by way of Russia.

"Most recently, yeah. I get around a lot." He starts summarizing, and by the time he's gotten three years back she looks absolutely appalled. He doesn't even spell out the details of what he's been up to but clearly she figures something out, by her tone of voice alone it's miraculous he's survived this long without being this seriously injured. He needs to go home, wherever that is, rest, and get some kind of desk job.

Not a chance, really, but he doesn't tell her that.

He's offered an owl after four days, and at first wants to contact the Ministry, but can't tell who'd be reading his mail. Finally, at the end of the week, there's a series of international portkeys set up that let him get back to London. It's only there he finally explains that the camera's lost (and presumably the egg), but one of the people involved is definitely named Zhang. This is much less helpful than Lee thinks he's being.

He goes to St. Mungo's for a second opinion, again leaving out the details of his foreign misadventures, but again the Healers can read between the lines. He's beaten too many odds already and would be much better off staying put.

"Take over after Hooch," suggests Alicia.

"Hooch? Is she still working at Hogwarts?"

"Not next year, that's why you should take over. It's not too bad, you just have to look out for a bunch of eager but kind of incompetent first years. And referee, of course, you'll get to fly." Her tone is always so dry Lee can't really tell if she's being wistful.

"They'd never have me, they'd never trust me to be unbiased."

Alicia can't politely deny it, so she just shrugs, but brings it up again when they get together in May. The others haven't heard so he has to repeat the whole story. "...and I had to stay in that sketchy hut or whatever for a week," he shudders. "No owls of sympathy or anything from any of you?"

"Oh, yes, because we feel so sorry for poor pitiable Lee. He couldn't help it, he didn't  _choose_  to go globe-trotting or anyway, he just got dragged into this whole mess and now maybe he doesn't get to go everywhere again," George glares.

It's early in the evening, nobody's started drinking yet, and even when they do it's hardly ever like this. There's no way for the Weasleys to live without making a scene, so Katie just breathes very deeply and tries to drag the conversation somewhere else.


	34. Cynthia

Cynthia Hershill was born on the run. After all, where nervous Muggle-borns are eloping, nervous young magicians often follow along. She has no memory of the war, of course, nor even of Hogwarts in its rebuilding days. She left as part of a full, talented class, facing keen competition for any job and even keener competition for the glamorous life of a young Quidditch star. Cynthia, however, had the goods, and after a couple years as a reserve for Ballycastle, she's finally seeing playing time.

The really dedicated Bats fans see her short biography in the program. It doesn't need to say much beyond her birthday and the fact that none of them, not even—eh? nope, not the dude in the row behind them either have heard of a Hershill, and she's a little too young to have gotten married and changed her name now that there's not a war on.

Here she comes now, not an arrogant superstar or anything, just a young woman ready to stand out. The pass to Thompson, Halloway, back to Hershill, still Hershill now, dodges a Bludger, pivots and avoids the other Beater. She shoots. She scores. The crowd roars. The crowd understands. The goal, admittedly, is not entirely relevant in the grand scheme of things once Ballycastle go on to win by two hundred and thirty. But it's a sign, a sign of a new era coming.

And, Oliver knows in the locker room afterwards, an old era going. He sleeps on it, has not changed his mind, and tells Ruth at practice the next day. Chaser and Captain, Ruth isn't the greatest strategist on (or, for that matter, above) the pitch, but she knows how to get the team to focus and Oliver appreciates that. He plays out the rest of the season, tells his teammates he's retiring before their last game, and they manage to keep it within a hundred and fifty that time for another mid-table finish.


	35. Ruth

Ruth picks out a replacement from the reserve team and it really sinks in, on opening day of the next season, how little Oliver has to do. Part of him is driven just to go back and watch, but he's so self-important he assumes his presence in the stands will be noticed. Which he kind of wants, and not. Instead he listens to the wizarding wireless and tests out some long-range Omnioculars (when it comes to sports broadcasting, the magical world is still lagging behind its Muggle counterparts). It's the first time in a while he's seen so many games from so far away, and it's difficult to get a real sense of what's going on. The Omniocular captions help, to be sure, but they try too hard to extrapolate from what's going on and he's left with a blur of nonsensical commentary scrolling by too fast to read. (To the wizarding community's "credit," many top-level Muggle announcers are almost equally bad.)

So he abstracts, trying to keep count of how many Wronski Feints there are versus Starfishes with Sticks. At first they're just tallies, things he doesn't know what to  _do_  with. The kinds of things he would've kept secret or shown to Ruth in the wee hours before practice, but they're just totals. He doesn't know what to do with them besides shove them in the face of whatever idiot is making the Omnioculars and tell them to give useful commentary for a change. He could try drawing a few conclusions and then giving them to his old teammates, but then if other people wanted them...

He starts scribbling, borrowing a few people's books: "When the Stars are Aligned: the intricate Arithmancies of Correlation," that sort of thing. He scribbles on parchments and on the back of his hand, on shopping lists and, one second of May, on paper napkins waiting for George and Angelina to show. His handwriting is thin and rushed, someone with no deadline but excited to find something out.

"Going to enchant the Xs and Os and make them fly around?" Katie teases. "What  _is_  this?"

"Quidditch tactics," he blushes.

"We caught on, mate," says Lee. "Only what's with all the...numbers?"

"I'm doing math," he petulantly replies. "S. Couple of Muggles in the States have the right idea, try and figure out which numbers are, er, lucky really, the right blend of formations to be successful in Quidditch. Course, they're just Muggles, they don't understand numerology or anything, but look, see how many reverse passes the Chudley Cannons throw when they're barely good enough to get their forward passes right? No wonder they can't win."

"Just wishing you'd found this out earlier? Maybe it could've helped."

"Maybe," Oliver twinges. He's had a good career, he tells himself, doesn't deserve to regret anything. "But it could have been a distraction from training, I'm not sure."

George and Angelina finally show up so they can really get underway, but Oliver leaves that night convinced he's found something, or  _could_  find something. He winds up compiling a table of tactics with a few tentative conclusions, which Whizz Hard Books picks up. Over the next few years, a few more people come out with broader claims, always nodding back to him in the preface, and Oliver realizes he's really been a success in his second career when the Cannons' captain asks him to sign a copy of his original book and makes him promise never to speak of the encounter. He does. The Omniocular manufacturers take a bit longer to update their products, granted, but there's nothing to be done about that.


	36. Arthur

Arthur shows up to the joke shop, unannounced, on the last Thursday of April. "Dad?" George grins. "What can I get for you?"

"Er, I'm looking for some Muggle...tricks, I suppose." He's holding a big shopping bag with what looks like a brightly colored, over-the-top robe and equally garish hat inside. "I know you used to sell non-magical tricks, didn't you? Only your mum's forbidden me from going to proper Muggle stores, or sending Molly some orders to place on my behalf, for the next month. Ever since the Apple Affair..." George is not really listening anymore. His little niece—no, not little, she's a teenager now—has always gotten to be Molly. His mum is Mum or Grandmum or "your Mum." On some level he supposes it makes sense—there aren't any diminutives of Molly—but it still isn't fair.

"Second aisle," he says.

"Right, then." Arthur ducks out of view, emerging a few minutes later with a fake wand and a stuffed rabbit.

"Do I want to know what you're at?" asks George.

Arthur is preparing some additions to a package to be owled off. Five days until his oldest granddaughter is of age. And regardless of Grandmum Molly's opinions, he thinks Victoire, who has spent all her life around magic, ought to have a whimsical taste of the Muggle way.

For George it'll just be May second again. "I'm not sure," Arthur says.


	37. Twycross

Twycross was a horrible teacher, really, and even Angelina had made fun of him behind his back. Angelina was not that serious of a student, but when there were still jokes to be made  _after_  the twins and Lee had had their fun, one was dealing with an easy target indeed. As soon as she had gotten her license, more than a quarter-century ago now, she'd Apparated like it was the most natural thing in the world and quite forgotten the details of the class.

They're sitting near the back of the Hog's Head this time. Every once in a while they suggest shaking things up, going somewhere else, but they do get a little bit of variety when people can't all come. One year Alicia was miserably sick, another year Katie was visiting Richard's family, the next Lee had some hang-ups at the Portkey office in Singapore and didn't make it back. So the back of the bar, within earshot (well, they're not sure about George) of the bathroom is fine.

Or would be.

"Too many firewhiskeysh," Alicia grins. "I'm going to the bathroom."

"Good plan," Lee says, approvingly. She nonchalantly scoots away from the table and out of sight.

Then, there's a  _Crack._ Pause.  _Crack._  Pause.  _Crack._

"That Alicia, you reckon?" George modestly proposes.

"Maybe it's shomeone going in and out of the bathroom," Lee ventures.

"It's obviously someone in the bathroom, you troll," says Angelina.

"Is she okay? Maybe she'd have called out."

"Maybe one of you should go look," Oliver nods at the women, "I would, but, you know."

"We don't even know it was the women's room," George points out. "What reason does anyone have to Apparate into a bathroom?"

"Alicia failed her Apparition test twice," Angelina suddenly remembers. "If anything's gone wrong—"

"She failed twice?" Lee gapes. "How come we never heard about thish? We'd have teased her no end."

"Lee, this is not the time!" Angelina exclaims.

"They're half a year older than us, they'd have tested early," George points out.

But then Alicia wheels back, coolly. "You okay?" Oliver nervously asks.

"Tipsy," she grins.

"We heard someone Apparating."

Alicia shrugs. "Have to get on the toilet, don't I?"

The others look around. This detail has somehow never crossed their minds. If Alicia had been any more sober, she would have taken it as a badge of honor.


	38. Columba

Columba was hired at Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes (they will  _never_  move the apostrophe, not on George's watch) too recently to remember George's Ear Phase that preceded the Great Pirate Debacle. She does, however, know the look on his face that can only mean inspiration has struck and that the front staff will have to do extra duty as he withdraws to the back room.

"Can't believe the Muggles beat us to the punch," he says, "or tried to, anyway. Ours will be more personal, though. For sanitation."

She has absolutely no idea what he's talking about. He doesn't  _mean_  to drop hints, they just come erratically. "I mean, on some level I've wanted to do this ever since the Tree-Skimmers beat Karasjok. What a game that was. Four whole days."

He orders supplies of cloth and various Muggle plastics, never showing any outward signs of experimenting upon himself except a grimace here and there. Not even Angelina notices anything more. Until the day he finally finishes a working prototype and drops by to visit the woman who inspired it all.

"I don't even want to know what that is," Alicia begins. "There are, thank goodness, so few people like me I highly doubt it'll sell."

"Define "like you"?" George challenges. "No, wait, don't. You're my, er...you get this one, free of charge. The real target audience is Quidditch fans. Like yourself! Who remain seated expectantly for long but still very thrilling games."

Alicia raises one eyebrow.

"Now, it should magically adjust to custom-fit you. What you'll want to do, and you can do this far away if you'd rather, is just affix it to your, erm, cheeks as it were. Then it'll expand as necessary, so you can, ah, use it on the go and then dispose of it at your convenience."

"George," says Alicia, "you've just reinvented the  _diaper_."

"Oi! It's a proper new magical device!"


	39. Stephen

Stephen is sick and Katie is staying home with him. Oliver is having dinner with "an old friend from Appleby." Alicia's working overtime because Cleansweep really, really want to beat Comet to the punch on the new dustpan innovation. Even George is out of town, trying to dissuade an overeager wizard from Australia who wants to open up a new Zonko's branch there.

But there are smaller crowds than normal some years, and Angelina and Lee can still meet up, getting a late start in the Hog's Head. He barely remembers the menus from year to year, dropping by the Leaky Cauldron much more often. He likes visiting with Neville Longbottom, who he appreciates for taking over the Herbology job while living above the pub. It made Lee more comfortable living on his own, popping into Hogwarts once in a while to help out the first years, and heading back in the evenings.

"Anybody decent leaving this year, then?" Angelina asks.

"Oh, they're all decent people I'm sure," he teases. "But no, no real stars. Think a few have signed though."

She shrugs. "Who knows? Really, how good someone'll be at this age. They're just eighteen, seventeen. They've got time."

"Yeah," says Lee. "Who'd have thought I'd be working at  _school_? Blech."

Oliver and Angelina  _did_  play professionally, some. Charlie and Harry didn't. George  _did_  do random things to make people laugh. Fred would've. Katie probably hasn't been on a broomstick in years. Ditto Alicia.

But he knows that, no matter how far away he travels or how boring a job he takes, he will in the end have changed the least of any of them from the Quidditch. Bar Fred, and  _maybe_  Oliver who's never quite given him a straight answer when he asks about the last year of the war and whose shame looks the same as his modesty. Lee hasn't changed; he's still looking at Angelina, still amazed by her, and she still does not feel the same way.

He picks a drink that sounds weird, something that the Leaky wouldn't carry. It tastes quite sweet, and doesn't make him feel as woozy as some other years. He quite likes it. Angelina's gone for something else, and is quiet, drumming her fingers against refill after refill. She grows more insistent, at last not even drinking but just tapping as if trying to remember a melody. "It's not right," she mutters, then tilts her head to look at him. "They're all gone."

"I...just this year."

"They're all gone," she says.

"Angelina, I think it's time for you to go home." He stands up. She doesn't. He reaches for her hand. She takes his. They both begin to squeeze more and more tightly. "Angelina, come on."

"I'm coming." She stands up. "Where are we going?"

"What?"

"They're all gone. But you're here. I'm here. Where are we going?"

"Angelina, are you okay?"

"Yes."

"Okay. We're going back to your house, right?"

She blinks, heavily. "Gryffindor. Right?"

Okay, she's just drunk. "Let's go." The bartender gives them a glance as they exit through the Floo, still gripping each other's hands tightly. They reemerge in Angelina and George's house without incident.

"Right, then." The night is still...the night is not young, but the morning is, and Lee doesn't really want to start extricating his fingers as things stand.

"Right." Angelina takes a step forward as if expecting him to follow after, and their sweaty hands jerk apart. She takes a few more steps, then turns around. "You coming, then?"

"Angelina..." There's no one she can confuse him with, surely? "Do...you know who I am, right?"

"Jordan!" she replies, as if borrowing McGonagall's voice, tight and annoyed.

"Right. Right." He turns back towards the fireplace.

"Where are you going?"

"Home." That's the short version but it'll do.

She looks upset, somehow. "They're gone. We're here."

"Angelina, you're not yourself. You don't want to do this." Whatever it is. He isn't quite sure what's going on himself.

"Jordan?" she asks, uncertain this time.

 _What if things had been different?_ he asks himself. A little more patience one day, a little good luck another. How easy would it have been for her to be Angelina Jordan?

"Are you coming?" she asks.

Angel of the holy river, something mystical, something outside the world he lives in now.

He throws himself through the fire and doesn't look back, falling asleep with his clothes on. He wakes up the next morning with a splitting headache and full of regret about the previous night. But the thing is, he barely had any alcohol.


	40. Melinda

Melinda and Stephen are both away at Hogwarts, and Richard doesn't seem to have adjusted incredibly well. Or maybe that is good adjustment, being able to sit there calmly in his living room with a wizard and not think anything of it.

"Katie'll be around soon," he said. "D'you drink coffee?"

"Yeah," says George. "Black, if you can."

"Sure," says Richard. Maybe he's used to it by now. He'd have to be, with Katie. A few minutes later, they're both sipping from matching cups (Richard likes cream, but not sugar).

"Actually, maybe you can help me. I'm looking for good books about French music...non-magical is fine."

"French music?" Richard raises his eyebrows. "You mean, like, Debussy? Daft Punk? Deux Dindes?" The last of these had broken onto the scene in 2018.

"Uh. Possibly. Maybe someone with an eckaletric guitar."

Richard pauses a bit, then guffaws. "Oh, very good. Yes, there are lots of eclectic guitarists. French and non-French." He licks his lips. "I can't think of any off the top of my head, sorry. Mind if I try and look one up on the web?"

"Go ahead," says George gamely.

This process involves Richard using a small device that was sitting on the table; George thinks it's a computer of sorts. Nodding as he moves his fingers across it, he breaks into a smile. "Serge Gainsbourg, yes. There should be a couple books about him."

"Gains...how do you spell that?" George has to copy it down onto a slip of paper. "Thanks."

"Of course. Katie should be back any minute if you'd like to stay and chat."

"That'd be nice, yeah," says George, sipping more of his coffee.

"I should turn some music on," says Richard, pressing a couple more buttons on his device which caused string music to begin piping in. "It's so quiet without the kids here. I'm not used to it."

George nods. "I know what you mean. Our youngest left school this last spring, she's living on her own now. It always does feel strange."

"I can imagine. And you have other children?"

"One son—living in France, of all places. This is his birthday present."

He doesn't really hear Richard's reply; it's only just sunk in. It's going to be Fred Weasley's twenty-first birthday. George can't believe it.


	41. Freddie

Freddie comes back to Britain when Roxanne goes into labor. He sits in the waiting room, tall and composed and so quiet that he reminds Lee of his parents; his parents, that is, in those painful seasons when they went from being George, and Angelina, to George and Angelina. Lee saw it happen, even when George could barely display any emotion for fear of being overwhelmed by it. When Angelina couldn't quite explain to the others that she and Fred were never boyfriend and girlfriend, per se, they just danced once and had a lot of fun, because she didn't know what she and George were. Saw it all, and let it happen, because he didn't want to be with that Angelina as she was, so exhausted and resigned. Wanted to see George  _less_  exhausted and resigned and hoped it would give him a chance to be happy, or maybe it wouldn't work out and George would be too furious for a few days to be miserable.

"You going back to France anytime soon?"

"Eh?" Freddie blinks large eyes. "No, I don't think so."

Lee nods. "I traveled the world a lot, at your age." And a while longer. "Till I fell off my broom and got dragged back here. Stinks, having to stay put."

Freddie waves his head back and forth, the picture of ambivalence. "I don't know. I think the baby needs me here." The baby is a couple hours old by now and still just "the baby;" her parents are too busy gushing over how beautiful she is to make any further progress. Roxanne and Joey both have brothers named after dead relatives (Uncle Marty was born a couple months after his grandfather's death), and both new parents like having the new names in the family; they eventually go with the real throwback of "Cleo." "To be what we never had. Me and Rockus and...everybody, Lou, James..." he shakes his head.

"Can't imagine you lacked for much, growing up."

"That's true," he smiles. "But she needs an Uncle Fred."


	42. Lucy

Lucy breaks the silence.

"What about Molly?"

"What about me?" Molly smiles politely.

"You always said you wanted a big family, didn't you?"

"Yes. Well. Er. Bobby and I...that is to say, we're still...I...ah...we're, er, getting there. As it were."

There's another, weaker, silence, interspersed by laughter. "Good on you," James grins.

"If you want a big family," Lucy presses, " _you_  should go on and take it."

Molly's jaw falls out from under her. "I can't...there'd be no way...I haven't really  _told_  them...the  _house_ is...No. No, it'd be impossible."

"All right," says Lucy. "All right, you're as likely as anyone is to have a big family, and you literally  _can not_  inherit the place. So let's stop worrying about who has the most kids, who doesn't, and think about what we're going to do. Have any of us lived here in the past...I don't know what? No, so if we want to find some magic family to sell it to and split the Galleons that'd be fine as well."

"You okay?" Angelina mouths. There are so many people that there's really no need for her and George to contribute much to the conversation, but at the same time any one of them could say something that comes out wrong.

He nods. "Later."

Once people have the chance to speak one by one, to everybody, without needing to jump to conclusions, the problem nearly resolves itself. The grandchildren love and remember the Burrow, but as a place for large family gatherings, not a place they could imagine living in day in and day out. The children also love and remember it, but they're all empty-nesters themselves, and can't imagine living there with their spouses, now. The great-grandchildren have no legal ability. Harry Potter remembers it the most fondly, if only as a contrast to his aunt and uncle's home.

"You're also Harry Potter," Lily points out. "You could buy the place if you wanted."

He says he'll think it over and if he doesn't decide to snap it up within a week, they should start contacting people and plan on splitting any proceeds that come. Angelina doesn't really expect him to, but then again, it's not really her business.

"It's just so weird," George explains when they're in private, "not feeling this attachment to it...or knowing that even if I did want to live there, it wouldn't be the same. Is that strange?"

"Of course not," she wants to say, but doesn't quite. "I don't think so. And even if it was, what would it matter?"


	43. Artemis

Artemis recognizes Oliver Wood from across the room and, as she is leaving, asks for his autograph, which he blushingly gives out. This in itself is not a surprise. What is, however, is the fact that the Hog's Head is clean enough to see across and pleasant enough to bring whole families to.

There have been a couple bartenders since Aberforth Dumbledore, most of whom tried to keep things more or less as they were, but the newest management committed to a complete overhaul of the place. The overhaul took place in late winter, so none of the yearly visitors knew about it until they crowded in.

"It's..." Oliver began.

"Full," Alicia supplemented.

And not only full, but full of people who seemed reasonably decent, glancing around and smiling at each other. The food was better, the alcohol less bitter, and the atmosphere noisier. Too noisy, perhaps; Angelina can tell when George was just grinning and slapping his knee in time to Lee's narratives, without really hearing what's been going on himself. Perhaps the others' senses are weakening too, in kind, but with George it's sharper.

"Do you ever think about getting your false ears out?" she suggests that night. "They were...charming."

"You'd already been charmed. And they itched."

"Hmm. I'm sure you could whip something else up." At his suspicious glance, she rushes to add, "if you ever wanted to bring them out again, I mean. Great conversation starters, those."

In the end, George's hearing or lack thereof is not what prompts them to start meeting in different places. It's that the bar is so different, they might as well go somewhere really new. So they go to the Leaky Cauldron and they go to the Green Man. They go to George and Angelina's house and they go to a Muggle restaurant where, despite being unrecognizable, they're actually treated pretty well—maybe having Alicia around helps.

And, of all things, they start talking about the war. Not about the second of May, the  _first_  second of May ("Hadn't there been almost two thousand of them before that?" says Lee. "More, really," says Alicia." "The calendar started at one point, it wasn't really May before that," says Oliver.) For them, at least, it'll always be the first one that really mattered. But they do talk about the year before. Oliver has gotten over himself and laughs in all the right places when Angelina talks about the strike, and Lee has somehow never heard the story of the two-way mirror. George, cleaning out at Roxanne's place, comes across an archive of Potterwatch episodes. They wait a few weeks, not sure whether they really want to listen, but are glad they do. Nereid and Romulus speak to them, laughing—Oliver makes a mental note to ask who exactly Nereid is, but has forgotten by the end of the episode. And Rodent and Rapier are there, too, switching code names week in and week out. There are a couple episodes when not even George's fading hearing or Lee's long memory can tell which was which.


	44. Dean

Dean, fortunately, isn't there when Lee makes a fool of himself. It all begins when, pushing seventy, he comes to a decision. Despite certain numerology-challenged individuals' broad and inaccurate generalizations, wizards  _do_  tend to outlive Muggles, and hence his Muggle counterparts are getting on in years. If for no other reason than standing to inherit large sums of money, Lee decides it's high time to play the dating game.

This begins as an utter travesty. If Muggle women aren't moping about departed loves, or demanding he care for their overlarge menageries, or constantly putting him on edge worrying that he'll blow his cover, or spewing utter nonsense when they think he can't hear, or pressing him for information on why he hasn't married before, or sicking up, they're Betty.

She is striking; not attractive in any particular way he can describe, but he is drawn to her in a way he hasn't been to any of the others. Maybe it's just his standards lowering. She has short gray hair—most of them did, really. Her skin's darker than four of his previous six attempts, and she does look familiar somehow, but surprisingly she doesn't remind him of Angelina at all.

She's an early riser and they go out for breakfast a lot, telling jokes over their pancakes. She is generous with syrup, he likes powdered sugar, and she seems to admire him more than she should. If he could only tell her his life story in full, perhaps she'd be able to appreciate his encounters with winged horses. The impression he gives is of someone who can't hold  _down_  a steady job and takes off, crossing borders a step ahead of some rather inept authorities (which isn't that far from the truth, but it doesn't explain the immediate fondness in her eyes). Not that he's complaining, though.

And when he goes over to her flat, they actually  _do_  things that don't involve photo albums and poodles. The things usually involve decks of cards. Then one day, out of the blue, she just says, "Thank you, by the way. I'm not sure if I ever thanked you properly."

"You're welcome," he says, "but the pleasure of your company is all mine."

She titters. "Ooh, no it isn't. But I was speaking of what you did for my family."

"Your family?"

"You were the one who captured Yeah...Yackles, yes? You and your friend?"

"Yackles? I don't know who you mean."

"The bad man, the murderer. In your war."

The world seems to swim around him. He blinks. No, everything's right where it should be. "Who  _are_  you?"

"Betty Thomas," she says. "Dean's sister?"

He squeezes his eyes shut a long moment and begins to remember. "Dean. Yes, of course."

"I contacted you by that magical coin, once. I found it and didn't know how to make it work."

"And Yackles. Yaxley, that's his name. How did you ever hear?"

"Dean told me. They...your...lot, the police or what have you, they put him under arrest and, examined his memories somehow? Someone told Dean about his, his birth father, that he hadn't run out on his family really. I'm not sure, I must have got it all wrong, but Dean's always appreciated that."

Lee can think of nothing to say but "Blimey. And you  _knew_  this was me? All along?"

"I reckoned."

"Oh." He racks his brains. "Blimey. I'm sorry. I forgot."

"Oh, it was no trouble."

"Trouble? No. But...you  _knew_. All along."

"Oh dear. Is this a problem?"

"No. No, it's just...I need a while for that to sink in."

It doesn't sink in, really. They go out a few more times, but he can barely make out that spark she made him feel amid all these other uncertainties that flare up when he looks at her. Eventually it's him who has to clumsily break it off. She smiles wistfully, but as he trundles off she looks at him the same way she always had, Lee Jordan, the one who helped discover the truth about her brother's family, and he knows she won't miss him long.


	45. Hannah

Hannah is the one who finally broaches the subject. She owns a bar, after all, she'd be the obvious candidate to host. And it's not like it was all entirely her idea; the young idiot of a Minister has passed on the proclamation from some underlings who think they're clever, and there'll be a grand to-do of a fiftieth anniversary ceremony.

"And since we'll be dragged there anyway," Hannah says in that agreeable way of hers, so genuine they're not sure if she's aware how impossible she is to refuse, "I thought you might want to drop by afterwards. For coffee or somesuch."

It's Lee who calls her out on it. "Who all's coming?"

"Ooh, er, Neville'll be there obviously," she grins, "and, er, I've invited a few of the old D. A. lot."  _All the D. A. lot are old_ , Lee notes, but says nothing.

They wind up contacting each other out of Hannah's sight and discover that, yes, they'veall been invited. "Like some kind of a reunion?" George gapes. Only a poor kind, of course. They never actually tried to get together as one, afterwards, because it would just be a big joke to call it a reunion.

"Some kind," Hannah says amicably. "I just thought it might be nice to see everyone."

Her desires alone aren't enough, but once they've started talking to each other behind her back they do go along with it. It  _would_  be nice to see everyone, although glancing at some of them Lee wonders whether Hannah is too shy to say "Yes, we lost a lot of people during the war, but  _since_  then we've been remarkably lucky to still have so many friends here fifty years on. Might as well take this chance, now."

Perhaps if they'd met up beforehand they'd have been too nervous, too busy swallowing shock at how old everybody looked to really make a night of it. But instead, they sit through a sweltering couple of hours, walk (and wheel) up to the stage when they're waved to, and then immediately head back to the Leaky Cauldron to make fun of it all.

They start mingling, meeting with alumni of different houses and different years. Maybe it's to hide the empty spaces or maybe it's to find someone they've lost touch with. There are grandchildren to boast about and family trees to trace—not in  _that_  way, but they have to review just who's married into the Weasley menagerie by now.

Lee discovers that other people have meetings as regular as his. Dennis Creevey always comes by to visit Neville, Cho Chang and Ernie Macmillan need to spend the mornings away from their Muggle spouses. Oliver, meanwhile, has dinner with Christopher, who met up with Bruce every few years. "Dumbledore's Army are getting together," Oliver explains. "About time, too. Good thing I wasn't killed or they'd have posthumously chucked me in as an honorary member and there wouldn't have been a cursed thing I could do about it."

"...yes," says Christopher, "Yes, that's certainly fortunate."

And the next year it's back to the six Lions, and the year after that, until the year when there are only five.


	46. Morris

Morris knows his line of work well. He works with customers who are flustered. Who don't want to make decisions. So he deliberately cuts down on their options. It's easier that way.

Lee tries not to stifle a laugh. Maybe he should let it all out, lighten people's moods up. But things being how they are, there aren't too many children or grandchildren around to amuse. And there isn't, despite its dimensions, a child in the lurid, floral, coffin.

Pink roses. Gag him.

A distractable young witch from Cleansweep handled most of the arrangements. Alicia had left almost everything to St. Mungo's, and so her oldest friends have seen little of each other during the preparations. Afterwards, though, they turn reminiscent.

Katie ("you might as well call me Katherine, everybody does") and Angelina are a little stiff towards each other, barely exchanging pleasantries, and depart hastily after the funeral. Not that anyone's in a mood to stick around. It's a brutally hot day, and of course they're all wearing black.

On the twenty-ninth of April, Lee and Oliver's owls cross in the mail. Both polite, asking if there were any plans, both writing to each other first rather than trouble the others. Amused, they meet each other in Diagon Alley and Lee agrees to invite Katie and George and Angelina over to his flat.

They all come, fifteen minutes late in the Weasleys' case and twenty in Katie's. He's ordered crackers, which they nibble on (bar George, who puts surprisingly many away). The talk is forgettable, in-and-out, and Lee is only half-listening when Katie says "I can't believe how much I changed that first year of Hogwarts. We were all friends by the end of it and nobody cared that I was just a little first-year. But when I came in," and now he sees that she is not quite making eye contact with Angelina, "you were just, these  _big kids_ ,  _teenagers_  really, Angelinandalicia—"

She has been stuttering just enough that the rush is perceptible, and the Weasleys interrupt with simultaneous "We weren't"s and "That's not the same"s.

"Look, maybe this was a bad idea," says Oliver. "I put Lee up to it, maybe we should stop." Katie has started to cry.

"No," rasps George, his arm around Angelina, "No, we ought to do this. Let it out, you know?"

Lee is not quite sure that he knows. He mourned for Alicia, of course, and he'll always sense her in the offing so long as they keep meeting up. Maybe it would be different if the rumors about the curse continuing to weaken her body long after her legs were gone were any more than rumors. But it was only grief for an old friend he felt, not numbness and outrage, and by now he has learned to live with that.

All of them deal with the grief in their own way, and he will not judge theirs so long as they don't ask him to understand it. The anniversary meetings continue. Maybe it's more important than ever that someone remembers.


	47. Neville

Neville Longbottom was a hero. You'll never hear anything different from Oliver. He even stood alongside the Snakeslayer for a few minutes on that fateful day, and okay, maybe he didn't understand how big a deal it was then. He's had a few decades to appreciate it, however, and now Oliver would be glad to give Neville all the credit he's due.

But.

But maybe the Daily Prophet's fact-checkers are just lazy. It's not like it's something only the dwindling group of those who were there could call the writer out on. None of them understood at the time, and could barely take it in when Potter explained.

Sighing, Oliver reaches for a quill—it's not like he has much better to do these days. After an opening paragraph singing Longbottom's praises—no need to mention the personal connection—he gets to the heart of the matter.

_While in no way diminishing his exceptional courage, this account mistakes the nature of the Full Body-Bind curse and its undoing. Longbottom did not break the curse through his own formidable ability. The curse was unstable because Harry Potter had already tried to let Voldemort kill him, with the goal of bringing about Voldemort's downfall. At that point all Voldemort's desires—or Longbottom's—were irrelevant._

_Of course, we didn't know it at the time. We still fought and bled, many killed and died. But Voldemort could no longer touch us._  His handwriting is thin and faint, unhurried but unwasteful. He thinks of the games he's played, the desperation of goalscoring and lack thereof wiped away at the touch of the Snitch.  _The battle that really mattered had already been won._

He stands at the window long after the owl is gone. They print the letter three days later, two pages behind his obituary.


	48. Emily

Emily, at least that's what Katie thinks her name is, could be Amelia or something, is the ringleader of the crowd. She's not the tallest or the strongest, nor even from the richest family—single-family houses are getting expensive in Katie's part of town—but the other children gravitate towards her. Maybe she has the most rational, level-headed approach to things. Mrs. Ampton lives on her own. She's a widow with a couple of cats and some extravagant fireworks on Guy Fawkes Night. To Emily, there's only one obvious conclusion to be drawn.

"Well?" Lee asks, curious in spite of himself.

"She assumes," says Katie, "I can hear her, I'm a  _witch_." There is silence, and then they all break into their first good laugh for a while. "A  _witch_! Can you  _imagine_?"

"To be honest, I can't," Lee admits. "I thought we lived in more, ah, enlightened times."

"We  _did_. People got bored of those."

"Is it hard," Angelina whispers so softly Lee wouldn't have caught it if he hadn't been looking at her face, "on your own?"

"Oh, Ang. I...I knew all along, if I ever married a Muggle, I'd probably outlive him by quite a margin. It's not easy, it  _can't_  be, but..."

To Lee's surprise, Angelina cuts in. "Is it wrong that I didn't want him to outlive me? It isn't like...I mean, he was so lost without him, Fr-Fred, and we lost Joey too young, I don't know how he'd..."

To Lee's further surprise, despite the fact that Angelina and Katie are leaning against each other, Angelina reaches for his hand. To his ever-increasing surprise, he takes it and they spend a long moment, or maybe it's an infinitude of moments woven together, holding each other's hands and it feels right.


	49. Lee

Lee and Angelina start meeting in the Muggle world when they stand out in the wizarding one. Katie did not outlive her Muggle husband by too long after all, and once they reach the point when two fellow combatants of the Battle of Hogwarts getting together on the second of May is  _news_ , they both decide it's time to start really branching out.

He's not sure what they are. Fellow combatants to be sure, who arrived at different times and with different people. Housemates, yearmates? Certainly the Muggles who serve them food draw the wrong conclusions entirely, and he minds more than he would have before. As annoying as the wizarding press is, they actually understand what he and Angelina tried to do for them, for the Muggles, for everyone. If Hogwarts students—like Emily, who turned out to be a Muggle-born witch—take History of Magic all the way through seventh year, and crack their textbook, they might even run across Potterwatch. The Muggles just see what they're used to in Angelina and Lee; so much less, and more, than the truth.

They meet up during other times of the year, too. It gets to be a bit of a joke, the birthday presents they send each other; Lee winds up with a sizable collection of Pride of Portree novelty socks, while Angelina's sock collection ranges from all over the world. (Lee has to explain who he is with each owl, as he's usually writing to the children or nieces and nephews of his onetime acquaintances.) But May 2nds are, while even more somber than they'd been at first, still something to look forward to.

Lee's Apparition skill is fading, and he doesn't trust himself with it unless he knows both destination and point of origin very, very well. And it's not even like he's too embarrassed to explain it to Angelina, she just understands when he says "Let's take a walk this time." It's a hot day, and they're sweltering in Muggle London when he pauses and breaks into a laugh.

She can tell there's a real, if slightly inappropriate, amusement in his face, it isn't that he's completely lost it. "What is it?"

"I just realized, this doesn't matter. All this, this walking around? It doesn't matter, where we go."

Now she's concerned. "Do you want to sit down? Should we go somewhere else?"

"No. I just mean...they outnumber us now. Wherever they are, telling stories or—or whatever they're doing, the real party is over there. We're just the stragglers."

She glances into his eyes—yes, for whatever reason, this is really hilarious to him. "Thank you for straggling with me."

"Oh, you're welcome. Not that I really chose you to be straggling with, but..."

"That doesn't matter. I'm...I'm glad you're...who you are."

There's a lump in his throat, so he just nods and says "Yes." Arms linked, slightly, they continue down the sidewalk and the Muggles smile when they see them, moving out of the way. They are old friends, they are fellow stragglers, they are in no hurry.


	50. Angelina

Angelina Weasley is dead.

It is May 2nd and Lee does not plan to leave his flat. He could, but he has nowhere to go. He does not want to talk to the WWN, whose employees have been on two more strikes since he left, as despite their strides he still feels like he'll just annoy everyone trying to show them how to do journalism. It's memory that's called for, and he can remember here as well as anywhere, if his eyes are closed.

But it is not the war he remembers.

Because memory is strange. The most important moments are best remembered before they happen. Like the end of the war...there were nights he sat around with Fred and George in flimsily-guarded houses whispering stories about what might happen.

" _...aaand here we are, folks, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, probably for the best as I don't think the Ministry is going to have any resources to spend on Obliviating poor Muggles after this whole affair. You-Know-Who—pah, might as well call him his real name by now, it isn't like he's in much shape to care at this point, is busy flying around, now..."_

" _How does he even do that?" George wondered. "I thought people couldn't fly unaided."_

" _Maybe," Fred mused, "he just has a really, really, tiny stick. If you know what I mean."_

_As George cackled, Lee grinned. "Yeah, a really tiny stick. All right, then Potter, whizzing above him, just casts Expelliarmus, the Chief Death Eater loses his grip, and falls to the ground, dead."_

" _And then," said George, "we toss some itching powder on his ugly little tattoo, so all the Death Eaters get in a right state. They show up, too busy scratching their own to notice the gang of Aurors that've just stunned them."_

" _Brilliant," Fred smiled. "Absolutely foolproof."_

They lived in hope, remembering the future before it happened. When the future becomes past, though, he remembers the moments of expectation he took for granted. He closes his eyes, and sees them again, on the cusp of glory but still on the rise.

Harry Potter, the boy who lived. Still a boy, still who had only lived once. Youngest Seeker in a century, not quite so young in Lee's mind but still young. No need to set records when all you want is victory.

Oliver Wood, not old really, but pushed up against an arbitrary boundary of an arbitrary game. As far as school goes, this is his last chance. But boundaries only go so far—the oval of the pitch is down on the ground, and the players are all up in the air.

An orange blur and the air split. The sound is all Lee's own, but that's the Weasley way, isn't it? Do something and then  _make_  the others make noise. Laughter or commentary, it's all the same. "Weasley," he feels himself mouth, and then again, because it doesn't take twice as much imagination when they're  _identical_ , "and  _Weasley_."

Katie Bell smiles broadly. She is in her element, playing Quidditch, and has no looming priorities beyond this game, whether it takes seconds or most of the day. Or more. It doesn't matter.

Lee squeezes his eyes tighter because this is almost harder than Fred. Alicia, riding her broom, zipping past Angelina and flying without incident. There's a game to be played, of course, that's some sort of incident, but then again there are more Chasers than any other position. If anyone can blend in, it's them. She still stands out, of course, but at least that's standing.

"And Johnson."

He inhales, understanding, and says again, "Johnson!"

Angelina Weasley has been dead for three months, and she is mourned by the people who knew her and loved her. There is no grave to mourn at—she was cremated following George's example, and of course he was following Fred's decades on. She'd had a good life, but that was that.

But he's the one who remembers Angelina Johnson. She's been gone for decades, and yet somehow she's as close as ever. Maybe he cannot see her, but maybe she can hear his voice.


End file.
